For the first 200,000 years of human existence, hardly any technological development happened at all relative to the last 600 years (though I am doubtful how much patents contributed to that development). The rate at which technological development has continued to speed up is part of what's causing problems here: patents last ~20 years, which is an eternity in IT. The other problem is granting patents on software at all - the USA is unusually permissive in this.